(473) 

 NOTE TO THE LIVES 



OF 



CAVENDISH, WATT, AND BLACK. 



I HAD not read M. Cuvier's * Eloge de M. Cavendish ' when 

 these Lives were first published. That Eloge is contained 

 in the Memoirs of the Institute for 1811.* Its composi- 

 tion certainly justifies the title of Eloge ; for it is a very in- 

 discriminate, and not very accurate panegyric of an illustri- 

 ous man, whose memory was best preserved and honoured 

 by a correct statement of the facts. M. Cuvier makes no 

 mention whatever of Watt in connection with the discovery 

 of the composition of water. But he is not much more just 

 to Black himself on that of fixed air ; or, as he calls him, 

 Blake : clearly showing that he had never taken the trouble 

 even to look at any work of that great man. As to Mr. 

 Cavendish, he gives it for part of his Eulogy that he ex- 

 plained his doctrines " dans une maniere plus etonnante en- 

 core que leur decouverte meme," (p. cxxvi.) Now if M. 

 Cuvier had read the paper upon the combustion of inflam- 

 mable air, he certainly would have found that this remark 

 in no respect whatever applies to it, for the composition 

 of water is but darkly shadowed out in that celebrated 

 Memoir. 



He proceeds to say, that in 1766 Mr. Cavendish under- 

 took, in his paper read before the Royal Society, to establish 

 propositions, " presqu'inouies jusque la ; 1'eau n'est pas un 

 element ; il existe plusieurs sortes d'airs, essentiellement 



* Nothing can be more confused, more inconsistent, than the manner of 

 publishing the volumes of this great work. It is generally a year or two 

 and even three or four, after the real date of the papers ; thus this twelfth 

 volume of the new series is called ' Mem. annee 1811,' yet it contains only 

 two papers of 1810-11; all the rest were received in 1812-13. I have 

 remarked this more fully in the Lives of Lavoisier and D'Alembert. 



